The BJP on Saturday released its second list of candidates for the Delhi Assembly elections, which includes a former Delhi chief minister’s son, five women candidates and almost all the leaders the party “imported” from the Congress ahead of the Lok Sabha elections last year. With 29 names in this list, the BJP has thus declared 58 candidates out of Delhi’s 70 Assembly seats. Seven of the nominees so far are women – equalling the total number of women candidates the party had fielded in the 2020 polls. According to BJP insiders, more women leaders are likely to figure in the party's third and final list of candidates, which may, however, include less than 12 names so that the nominees from its NDA allies, such as the Janata Dal (United), Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) and Eknath Sinde-led Shiv Sena, could be accommodated. “With the announcement of Harish Khurana, former Delhi CM Madan Lal Khurana’s son, as the BJP candidate from Moti Nagar, the party has now given tickets to two ex-CM’s sons including Sahib Singh Verma’s son Parvesh Verma against Arvind Kejriwal from New Delhi,” a senior party leader said. “In addition to five women candidates in this list – which brings the total number of female leaders fielded so far to seven – more are likely to be accommodated in the final list. Councillors with a good public connect, such as Umang Bajaj who has been fielded from Rajinder Nagar and Manoj Kumar Jindal fielded from Sadar Bazar, have also made the cut among many other sitting or former BJP councillors,” a party source said. The BJP also dropped its sitting Karawal Nagar MLA Mohan Singh Bisht, who has represented the seat five times, for Kapil Mishra, marking the return of the latter to his former home turf from where he had been elected on an AAP ticket in 2015. Another AAP turncoat in this list is Priyanka Gautam, a former councillor who joined the BJP in December, who will contest from the Scheduled Caste-reserved Kondli seat. Another senior BJP leader pointed out that all but one of the senior Congress leaders who had joined the BJP in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections have been given tickets. While the names of leaders such as former Delhi Congress president Arvinder Singh Lovely, fielded from Gandhi Nagar, and Rajkumar Chauhan, pitched from Mangolpuri, figured in the BJP’s first list of 29 candidates last week, Neeraj Basoya, a former Congress MLA, has been given the BJP ticket from Kasturba Nagar now. Naseeb Singh, who had also joined the BJP last year, has not been fielded so far. “The seriousness with which the BJP views the upcoming elections can be understood by the point that even sitting councillors have been fielded, reducing our numbers in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi House,” a source said. The BJP’s Laxmi Nagar MLA Abhay Verma is among the party’s sitting legislators who has been named in the second list.
